Yes, I see it now - that is exactly what I wanted to do. I never looked at that variable code very closely before but now I see that it is a ternary (sp?) operator. That makes things much more powerful. ;)
Now the last hurdle is that I have dual password fields to ensure that the password is entered correctly (pretty standard) and I am using WA Server Validation to make sure that they are the same before the password is inserted.
I guess that if I allow blank entry to pass here then this will all work. :)
Thank you very much.